


Thanks Giving

by StarGzer



Category: Lancer (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:42:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27702947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarGzer/pseuds/StarGzer
Summary: Scott spends a reflective moment.
Kudos: 3





	Thanks Giving

**Author's Note:**

> As far as the eye can see. The most beautiful place in the whole wide world. Lancer.

Idle talk on Lancer had a twelve-hour life expectancy if measured from six o’clock in the morning to six o’clock in the evening. That was the hour when cowboys gathered at the bunkhouse to spew outrageous stories over their beef and biscuits while family sat at the mahogany table in the dining room, the conversation being only a tad more refined.

Laughing over the day’s events—because a new cowboy coupled with a green horse was never not-funny—Scott waved off Frank and Walt to the ranch and their already late suppers. From their haste, it looked like the conversation in the bunkhouse tonight would be scandalous, mostly at the new hire’s expense. Scott was sure either Frank or Walt, perhaps both, had been raised by Spartans.

He veered left to his thinking place. 

The hills swam in the unexpected heat of what Murdoch had termed an Indian Summer, shimmering as if reflected in water. Their dark forms gave a natural contrast to the muted greens, yellows, and golds coming from the valley floor.

He took a drink from his canteen and swished it around in his mouth before swallowing. The water was warm and tasted stale. He sloshed some over his neck and enjoyed the warm-cool sensation of the light breeze blowing over it. He should point his horse for home, but the truth of the matter was the complete solitude of this place beckoned. He never thought he would get used to a place that could be so _quiet_. Yet it seeped into his bones, made him feel a sort of peace he never knew in the city. He would take a few more minutes.

After the war, Scott had wanted desperately to go back to his old life—the hopeless wish of a man wanting to be a boy, forgetting the pain of little boys. At some point in the maelstrom of the antebellum, his mindset changed. To more westerly climes. 

It was a word that caught his attention from the Pinkerton, one word a promise, a curse. _California_.

It drew Scott to the west like it was a warm campfire to hold your hands to as if in prayer, to feel the gentleness creep into your veins, smooth your worries and pain away to start anew. It was so cold in Boston and to hear the word—that place—meant everything. An antidote to frigid rooms inhabited by his grandfather’s cold obsession. For although the man was never physically there for Scott, his father’s presence always loomed. An enigma. California meant endless summer, was the way to suss out the puzzle of abandonment, to satisfy his curiosity. Even now, after everything they had been through, the sound of it still lifted something in him. 

The first sight of his father had forced recognition that he had some hard choices to make. He had been shocked by Murdoch Lancer. His clothes hung loosely on his six-foot-five frame and his flesh seemed one size too big for the bones underneath. Hair coarse and shot through with grey. Scott liked a challenge but throw in a colorful brother he never knew, not to mention land pirates, and he was nearly undone.

His horse blew out a breath of boredom and flicked one ear forward. On the rise ahead Scott spotted jackrabbit ears. Sweat trickled down between his shoulder blades. Not nearly as hot as summer, but warm, nonetheless. “You could be in Boston,” he reminded himself, “already neck-deep in scarves and woolen overcoats.”

Then again, he could have been in Europe practicing his French on comely Parisiennes. 

But instead he was here. He had made his decision. Lancer was a father and a brother and everything that went along with that, as he was learning. A home, not a place you went back to visit, but one where you stayed.

And he was thankful for it.

The End


End file.
